


Yours is the Only Voice

by salable_mystic



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: B.A.R.F. | Binarily Augmented Retro Framing, M/M, Not A Fix-It, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Tony Stark Has Issues, Tony Stark Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-27
Updated: 2018-01-27
Packaged: 2019-03-10 06:51:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13496978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salable_mystic/pseuds/salable_mystic
Summary: The days are long, the Compound is a lonely place to be, and Tony Stark has B.A.R.F.Not the best of combinations.





	Yours is the Only Voice

**Author's Note:**

> For what it's worth, I don't think using B.A.R.F. can actually kill you.
> 
> This is for my bingo card square "voice," which made me thing about John Farnham and "The Voice", which somehow lead to ... this.
> 
> Also, uh: TRIGGER WARNING for addictive behavior.

.

 

 

The problem with B.A.R.F. is – besides the still somewhat unfortunate name – that one cannot only revisit traumatic memories with it and try to overcome them, one can revisit all and any kinds of memories with it.

For the longest time, Tony tried to be strong, to resist the siren call of the device.

Oh, he went back to that god-forsaken Hydra bunker in Siberia with it, again, again, again, and _again_ , to see what he might possibly have changed, where things might have been different, have gone better, what could have been done to change the ultimate outcome … and when that wielded no convincing results, not without either him or Steve acting entirely out of character, he went back earlier, to Leipzig, to Berlin, to the discussion of the Accords in the Compound, … and, yes, there were ways of averting their split, but they involved either Steve signing the Accords or Tony not signing the Accords, and, well – either one of those was nothing but a pipe-dream.

So, after that, Tony tried to put B.A.R.F. away. There was nothing he could have done to achieve a better outcome, so he should be content with that. Right?

Right.

But the days were just so – empty, now, without Steve. Not that they had seen all that much of each other in recent months, not after the disaster that was Ultron and with Tony having stepped back from the team, but still – there had been more of Steve in his life then than there was now. So much more.

Now, well … he had Rhodey, and Pepper had started coming by again, sometimes, and there was the Spiderkid, and Vision, when he wasn’t off exploring the world and/or himself, but … he missed Steve.

He missed Steve and their conversations and disagreements and the tension between them, he missed … everything that remained unsaid between them. Would things have gone differently if either one of them had ever manned up and admitted to the attraction, the zing, the sexual tension that they created?

Idle and entirely pointless speculation now, of course.

But, even when not pondering that, and leaving all that aside – Tony still missed Steve. Missed the exhilaration, the challenge of having to prove himself to the other man, missed the quiet moments between them, the friendship, the occasional intimacy … he missed so much, and he missed it all so much, and while he didn’t have it in his power to create new memories, and had no hope of seeing Steve again in the near future, or that things would ever go back to being what they once were, of them being friends again … he did have the past, right there, at his fingertips … and Tony, well … Tony had always been bad when it came to resisting temptation.

So - he had to be careful with it, he knew … B.A.R.F. had the potential of being addictive, and Tony had an addictive personality.

But an hour here or there couldn’t hurt, he was sure. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to spend time in the here-and-now, or with the people he had left … it was just that it got awfully quiet in the Compound sometimes, and that he was often the only one in the building … and, well, the Compound was a building that had been created with Steve and the other Avengers in mind … so he often imagined hearing their voices down a corridor or in a room behind a closed door anyway … and wasn’t it better then to re-live a happy memory and re-listen to things that had actually been said, rather than letting his brain run wild and conjure up visions and imaginations?

And, well, he did have good memories of Steve and the other Avengers, he _did_.

Memories from the time before Ultron, from when they all lived in the Tower together … when he and Steve were friends, were growing ever closer, when they went out for dinner or to a ballgame or … from before Hydra came back, from before the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D., from before Steve discovered that Bucky was still alive.

And so, for an hour or so, every other evening – and just for an hour and just every other evening, he was being careful, after all – Tony allowed himself to indulge, to re-visit those glorious months and years, when he had, in retrospect (and this was something he was only learning about himself now – a day late and a dollar short – and how ironic was it that a billionaire was short a dollar?) … when he had been happy. The happiest that he had ever been, PTSD from the Chitauri attack and constant worries about the future of mankind notwithstanding.

He really only did it when he couldn’t sleep, when he was prowling the Compound, when the place was both far too big and the walls were closing in on him, all at the same time, when he felt lost and alone and adrift and so small and desolate … and, well … it helped.

And Tony discovered that, if he spent an hour or so in his happy memories of the past, sleep – sometimes – came easier to him. So that was a good thing, right?

It was a good thing.

Rhodey even commented on it, mentioning that the dark circles beneath Tony’s eyes had lessened, and that he looked better rested and less haunted.

So, it was working.

B.A.R.F. was working.

Maybe not for the purpose that he had initially invented it, but lots of devices and things were initially invented for one use and then applied to an entirely different one for great benefit. Take Teflon, for example – invented for space travel, now making pans non-sticky all over the world. And B.A.R.F … was somewhat like that, wasn’t it? Invented to help people cope with traumatic memories, to help Tony overcome his PTSD, but also now proven to be an excellent sleep aide.

Tony didn’t tell Rhodey why he was sleeping better, though – Rhodey was such a worrier sometimes, when it came to testing new tech, so why worry him? It was working, and that was what mattered.

So Tony used it every evening. But still, only for an hour. He was being conscientious, after all.

And then, entirely by accident, Tony discovered that one could also fall asleep while using B.A.R.F., and that that meant that one kept interacting with the memories one had last been focusing on when awake – wearing B.A.R.F. while sleeping then kept other memories or specters from intruding on one’s sleep. It did, well, do _something_ to one’s R.E.M. cycle in order to do so … but Tony was no psychologist, and didn’t want to become a psychologist either, and so he didn’t know what precisely it did to one’s sleep, but, well … he was fine, afterwards.

Even tried sleeping while using B.A.R.F. a couple of days in a row, just to be sure. And - he was fine. Great, even. No dreams about Siberia, about Steve smashing his shield into Tony’s Arc-reactor, of not being able to breathe, of his heart stopping, then and there, of being abandoned, cold and so alone … nope. Only happy, warm, slightly melancholic dreams. Much better. No other side effects that he could tell.

So – great!

And, because it worked so well for his sleep, Tony kept using it every night.

He moved it to his bedroom, even, because sleeping in his workshop chair was really not all that great for his back, and also very uncomfortable in general … and, well, B.A.R.F. wasn’t all that big a machine, so it was easily accomplished. Tony wanted to sleep while using it, after all, and so he didn’t need the holo-projection capabilities it had, so it wasn’t as if he needed to set up all that much new tec … he didn’t want to change the memories, after all, he didn’t want to observe himself in them, he just wanted to _be_ there … and he didn’t need to see them, to be there.

He’d put on B.A.R.F. – he’d constructed a better, flatter, interface, one that could more easily be worn to lie down and fall sleep with (good for therapy patients, anyway, right? Weren’t they always lying on couches?).

So he’d just close his eyes, think of a happy memory, and fall asleep listening to Steve’s voice talking about baseball or art or poetry or politics or … he wasn’t picky. All he needed was for Steve to be there, to not be hating him, to be there, right there, with him again, to be his friend again to be his again … to relax, and to finally sleep.

Tony needed a little more sleep now than he usually did, because apparently messing with one’s R.E.M. cycle had some kind of effect, after all …  but that was fine. Negligible. He’d only ever slept a maximum of six hours, even on a good night, so it wasn’t as if eight or nine hours cut into his day all that much. Most people slept eight hours, didn’t they?

Eight hours of nice, unbroken, sleep were much better than six of restless and nightmare haunted sleep.

And it wasn’t as if anyone would miss him in those hours, or even noticed … he still saw Rhodey during the day, Pepper sometimes, did some R&D in his lab (sometimes he listened to his memories during those times now, too … the lab was just so _quiet_ otherwise, and who needed AC/DC or Iron Maiden or … when he could listen to Steve talk about art? He could focus much better when Steve was whispering to him, so he really was doing it to be more efficient, which … great!).

Tony even also went into the city occasionally to keep an eye on the sale of the Tower (though really, they didn’t need him for that, and he could barely stand going into the Tower sometimes, for all the memories that it evoked … his memories seemed more vivid now that he was interacting with them so often, and the strangest things could trigger them sometimes, and then he wouldn’t quite know what was present and what was past … and anyway, Happy was doing great overseeing the sale of the Tower, and he was keeping track of the Spiderkid, and so it wasn’t as if Tony was needed in the city… so, yeah, maybe he had stopped going there, but so what? He was finally taking care of himself, like everyone wanted him to, it was fine).

He kept making progress on Rhodey’s braces, which was the important thing, and he forwarded all his breakthroughs to Stark R&D, so Pepper was happy with him – finally happy with him again. He was pulling his weight as the head of R&D, and he could just as well do that down in his lab, with Steve whispering in his ear, as he could do it listening to rock music.

And, well, how come he had never realized what a great thing afternoon naps were? They were great! The best! Why hadn’t he started taking them years before? (Tony ignored the inner voice that mentioned that he hadn’t needed them, before he started using B.A.R.F. – the voice didn’t sound like Steve’s, so clearly it wasn’t important).

So, yes, maybe he slept more these days than he did ever before … he was exhausted though, the last months, and, well, years had been hard, and apparently his batteries were all depleted and needed re-charging. Which … easy problem, easily solved. Rhodey went to see his family every weekend, now that his range of motion had been mostly restored, and there was talk of him going back to work part-time for the military again, in an advisory position for the time being, but eventually as War Machine … so Tony simply use those days to catch up on his sleep deficit, got some good long nights in, let Steve soothe his frazzled nerves … that was all. Nothing to worry about.

Sure, his back kind of complained, now that he spent so much time lying down, but Tony just did regular stretching exercises – Steve’s voice from back during their work-out sessions in the Tower was a great motivator for those – and that problem was taken care off, too.

See? Tony knew how to take care of himself.

He even cooked. Cooked! Not too many different dishes, but he did cook. Still, sometimes he wished he had been in the kitchen more often when Steve cooked something, as he was growing kind of tired of eating either eggs or spaghetti with meatballs … but still, he was eating. And sleeping. And exercising.

Tony was fine.

He was fine.

So Rhodey and Pepper and Happy could just take their concern and shove it.

So what if his hands trembled sometimes and he didn’t have the best body hygiene anymore and he had a hard time focusing on what they were saying … it wasn’t that there was anything wrong with him or that he had a problem paying attention, he … he _didn’t_ … it was just that their voices … weren’t … important. No, no, that wasn’t quite right … they were important, but they weren’t Steve’s … and Steve, well, Steve kept telling him that Tony was doing great, was doing fine, was a valuable team member, had done well on the last mission, good job, Iron Man, … so clearly, they were wrong.

As long as Steve kept telling Tony that he was doing well, Tony was fine. Steve’s voice, his approval … that was what mattered. Pepper and Rhodey and Happy … they … they just didn’t understand. But Steve -  Steve understood. And that was what mattered.

Tony was doing fine.

He was fine.

And once Rhodey got that part-time job with the military sorted and moved down to D.C. for it, Tony could finally stop setting himself an alarm every morning, and just sleep. Finally, finally just sleep, for as long as he wanted. And he so wanted to sleep. He was so, so tired.

But it was only another week, and then Rhodey was moving to D.C., and then Tony could sleep.

 

.

 

“ _Come to bed, Tony_ ,” Steve’s voice whispers in his ear, all the time now, full of hope and yearning and fondness and love, “ _Come, come and sleep_.”

And soon, Tony will.

Not yet, but soon.

And Tony, Tony can be strong until then.

Because Tony – Tony’s fine.

He’s fine.

 

 

 

 

The End.

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
